


Step On In

by notjodieyet



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: And There Were Only Two Beds, Cowardly Nardole Protection Squad, Gen, Minor Twelfth Doctor/Missy, Minor Twelfth Doctor/Nardole, Platonic Bed Sharing, Sharing a Bed, Unnecessary Enthusiasm for Ladders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:48:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27824776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notjodieyet/pseuds/notjodieyet
Summary: At a Festival of Ladders on an alien planet, the TARDIS breaks down, forcing the Doctor and company to seek accommodation somewhere else.The hotel room doesn't quite have enough beds.
Relationships: Missy & Bill Potts, Twelfth Doctor & Nardole & Bill Potts
Comments: 12
Kudos: 24





	Step On In

In the past year, Bill Potts had witnessed her fair share of marvels: a girl who turned into water, bugs that became a house, robots who spoke emoji, a spaceship that beeped happily when it received a few compliments. She had never, throughout all her exploits, imagined she would end up participating in a Festival of Ladders

Bill blinked, taking in the bright colors of the market stalls, the streamers hanging off the edges of each booth, the variety of alien species milling around the square. Despite the late hour, the marketplace was lit up by a warm luminescence from the huge triple moons hanging in the night sky. Around the marketplace, festival-goers had hung up ladder-shaped lights, which reflected a brighter yellow glow onto Bill’s skin. 

A creature pressed up close to her, and she took a step towards the Doctor as she noticed the tentacles squirming on its face. If she was lost here, there was no guarantee she’d ever find her way home again. She grasped for the safety of his arm. “Some crowd,” she said.

“Just like Woodstock, eh?” Nardole said happily, then amended, “Though we never took you there. Had quite a time, the Doctor and me.”

“Oh—it’s _you_ ,” said Bill, breathing a sigh of relief. “Where’d the Doctor run off to?” He’d been right beside Bill a few moments ago. She was sure of it. 

“Have you checked the fortune-telling stall? He does _so_ like to make a fool of himself.”

Next to her, Nardole stiffened. He turned to the woman by their side who was idly scanning the crowd with an almost-hungry expression in her icy blue eyes. “I told him to watch you,” he said. 

Missy sniffed, pulling a tube of lip gloss and a mirror from her peacoat pocket and making some small adjustments to her makeup. “I can behave myself for a night, you know. Now, do remind me, we’re looking for the dried-up angry eyebrow one?” 

“As opposed to what?” Bill asked.

“Oh, you don’t want to meet the others,” Nardole assured her. “Trust me. They’re all _very_ rude.”

“They just don’t like _you_ , dearie.” Missy popped her lips and, with a graceful flick of her wrist, the mirror and lip gloss were gone. She craned her neck up to peer at the stalls ahead of them. “Jewelry… flowers… dye…” She squealed and snatched at Nardole, who scrabbled for Bill’s hand in desperation. “Fried dough!”

“Hey!” Bill protested, finding herself tugged after the two of them. She wasn’t keen on letting Missy drag them around, and to be honest, she was still a bit worried about the Doctor’s disappearance, her eyes searching the crowd for a familiar face.

They dashed through the marketplace for a minute or two, although it felt like an eternity longer, during which Bill hung on to Nardole’s hand for dear life. If she got lost here, she thought, she would never be home again. She might have to celebrate Christmas with… ladder-shaped parcels, or something. 

Missy let out a chirp of triumph when they finally arrived at her intended destination: a food stand of sorts. It smelled distinctly like oil and flour, and pots on a stove crackled and bubbled away cheerfully. “Fried dough,” said Nardole helpfully. 

A bony figure leant over the counter to haggle, tapping his long fingers rhythmically on the wood, but Bill was too distracted by the vendor, whose scales and yellow eyes reminded her of a bearded dragon her science teacher brought to class one day in primary school, to give the man much attention. 

“Is it still the same here?” she hissed at Nardole. 

“What?”

“Dough! Is it still… oh, I don’t know, flour, butter, baking powder…? Can I eat it?” Bill’s eyes widened. “Is it poisonous to humans? Will I drop over like—” She drew a finger across her throat, grimacing. 

Nardole shrugged blithely. “I think you’ll be fine.”

The figure at the counter sighed, and dropped a handful of clinking coins on the counter. “Have it your way,” he scowled, stepping back and crossing his arms. 

The vendor made a series of quick chattering and clicking noises and handed over a package of dough, wrapped in crinkly white paper that seemed to shine in the light from the ovens and lanterns of the booth. Bill clicked her tongue, in admiration, trying to imitate the sounds. 

The man nodded at him and snatched the bundle away, turning on his heels to face Bill, Nardole, and Missy. “Want some?” asked the Doctor.

Missy darted forward almost immediately with a serpentine slinking motion and snatched the packet from his hands, pausing only to smack a kiss on his cheek. He looked smugly self-satisfied at this. “You’re a _darling_ ,” she purred. She tore the paper open with purple-lacquered fingernails and lifted out a steaming slice of sugary fried dough, bit into it delicately, before handing the packet over to Nardole.

“Why’d you run off?” Bill asked the Doctor. Nardole bit into the dough and exclaimed in pain. “You left us alone with—” Her eyes darted to Missy, who was humming and rocking gently back and forth as she relished her dough, powdery sugar flecked around her lips— “ _her._ ” 

The Doctor chuckled. “Sorry about that. She didn’t cause too many problems, I’m sure. Nardole, quit hogging the sweets.”

“Sorry, sir,” said Nardole, and he shoved the packet roughly at Bill. It was pleasantly warm in her hands.. “And, er, please don’t do it again. Her, I mean. Leave her. Please don’t leave her with us again.”

“You do know I can hear you?” asked Missy, flicking a spot of sugar off her shoulder. 

“Yes.”

Missy sniffed.

The Doctor waved her over and snaked an arm around her waist. She hummed happily and rested her head on his shoulder, met Bill’s eyes, and smiled. “As much as I’ve enjoyed our little excursion,” he said, “I think it might be best to return to the TARDIS for the night.”

“We just got here,” Bill protested, swallowing her treat. It tasted so similar to the dough back at home, but it had a nutty, buttery quality she couldn’t quite place. 

“We can come back tomorrow. They’ve got a show with fire.” The Doctor looked over to Missy, whose hand had been determinedly creeping up his chest as he’d been speaking, and smiled fondly down at her. “I think it would be best to lock this one up again before she gets any ideas.”

“Think she’s already had a few,” Nardole muttered. 

Bill opened her mouth to object again, but she was seized by a powerful yawn. “Well—all right,” she said. Perhaps she _was_ a bit exhausted. “As long as we can see the burning ladders tomorrow.”

“Promise.”

* * *

“Hm,” said the Doctor from inside the TARDIS. “That’s…”

“Concerning,” Missy’s voice echoed out.

Bill and Nardole, still outside, exchanged a worried glance.

“Go in,” said Nardole.

“You first!” Bill scoffed.

Nardole pursed his lips. He took a tiny, careful step toward the door, looked back towards Bill, and took a deep, steadying breath. “... _Nope_!” he blurted. “Absolutely not. Don’t trust it in there. No sirree.”

Bill sighed. “Fine, I’ll go. You’re cleaning out the temporal reactor, though.”

Nardole muttered something about the Doctor’s students passing off their chores onto him as Bill entered the police box and the door slammed shut behind her. 

Inside, it was completely and utterly void of light. Bill blinked, futilely, hoping her eyes would adjust to the pitch blackness. She took a few long, quick steps forward, before slowing and reaching out a cautious arm. Her hand found something warm and soft.

“Watch it!”

Bill’s heart skipped a beat at Missy’s voice. No matter how many times the Doctor assured her Missy was perfectly safe, no matter how many times he let her fiddle with the TARDIS controls, no matter how many papers he let her grade, she couldn’t help but imagine every child that died at the Time Lady’s hands. 

_“I don’t know,”_ the Doctor had commented once, _“why I still care for her.”_

_“She’s your friend,”_ Bill had responded, idly doodling on the orchid diagram she’d printed out in the library for that day’s now-forgotten lesson. 

_“She thought an army of armored corpses was an acceptable birthday present,”_ the Doctor said, his face dangerously still. Bill had trouble reading him, more than she usually had trouble reading people—he was older, quicker, angrier than he looked. _“She once gave me the ashes of a city destroyed for our anniversary. She said a thousand years was fire.”_ The Doctor gazed at a spot just above Bill’s shoulder for a moment, the room awash in troubled silence.

Bill had cleared her throat, and the Doctor frowned, adjusted a framed photograph on his desk. _“Anyway,”_ he had said. _“Where were we?”_

Bill thought of that conversation now, wringing her hands in an attempt to distract herself from the tingling in her skin. “Sorry,” she muttered, after a too-long pause. “I didn’t… er, I didn’t see you there.”

Missy made a disinterested humming noise. “Give her a night, I think.” Bill tried to comfort herself with the Doctor’s presence—at least if Missy decided to murder her under the cloak of darkness, he would know she’d been here. 

“A night?” said the Doctor, distressed. 

“Let the generator wake up.” 

“Hello?” said Bill. “What’s wrong?”

“Power’s out,” said Missy, her voice suddenly echoing right behind Bill, and she spun on her heels to face her. 

“The generator needs to power up, is all. We’ll get a room in a… hotel, or an inn, or something,” said the Doctor.

“But the festival,” said Bill. 

“I’m sure something will be open,” the Doctor reassured, and the noise of a screw or nail falling to the ground with a _clink_ sounded somewhere near his voice. “Does your telephone light up, Bill?”

Bill pulled her mobile out of her back pocket and switched it on, fiddling around until she found the torch app. Tapping it on, she swung her phone around, washing a small portion of the TARDIS in dim light. Neither Missy nor the Doctor were anywhere in sight. 

Bill stumbled a few steps around until the beam of the torch illuminated two figures by the control panel. The Doctor was crouched down, screwing a metal piece back on, and Missy stood next to him, her hand gently resting on his shoulder.

“That’s better,” the Doctor muttered. 

“You best wait for us outside, I think,” said Missy to Bill, her lips turned up into a menacing grin. She gave the Doctor’s shoulder a squeeze. 

Bill swallowed and navigated back to the door, taking a deep breath when she arrived at the door and left the ship. “Hello,” she said to Nardole, who recoiled and squeezed his eyes shut. “It’s really not that bad,” she said, exasperated.

“You’ve just—you’ve just got a light _directly_ in my eyes.”

“Ah,” Bill switched off the torch and stuffed her phone safely away. “Sorry about that.”

“So what’s going on?”

She jammed her hands in her pockets. “A power outage, apparently. The Doctor said we’d have to get a room here.” 

Nardole shifted from foot to foot. “A room,” he said, and something flickered across his face so quickly Bill couldn’t identify it.

“Something wrong with that?”

“What? No,” said Nardole. “Nothing’s wrong. What would be?”

Bill examined him, ignoring his petulant sniff. “Oh my God. Something’s up.” She shivered, although it wasn’t cold. What wasn’t Nardole saying? Were they stuck here? Bill felt somewhat upset that Nardole thought he had to seem unafraid for her sake. She wasn’t frightened.

“No. I — do we even have _money_?” he asked, throwing up his hands. 

Bill tried to focus. “Seventy years has to do _something_ to your salary.” 

“That piano, though.”

“The piano was an investment I do not regret,” said the Doctor, standing in the doorway of the TARDIS, leaning against the wall. He would have looked quite dramatic, or dashing, or something, but the effect was ruined by Missy tugging at his shirtsleeves. “Why the speculating about my finances, now?” he asked, and the two of them stepped out and shut the door behind them.

“For the room, sir. Rooms, I suppose.” Nardole’s eyes flicked over each of them in turn, as if to take stock. “It’s Festival day, and there are… a good few of us,” he added quietly, with a particularly sour look in Missy’s direction. 

Missy tsked. “The jealousy is unbecoming, darling, honestly.”

Bill couldn’t help quirking her eyebrows, considering Nardole anew. “Jealousy?” she teased.

“Absolutely not,” Nardole blustered, his eyes lingering on the Doctor for longer than necessary, and adjusted his coat collar with a noticeably pink tinge to his cheeks. He cleared his throat. “Shall we get going?”

Missy took the Doctor’s arm, and they strode off amicably. They got going.

* * *

After a long, arduous search, during which Bill heard enough ladder-related platitudes to last a lifetime, they found an inn with a vacancy sign still out front. 

In the lobby, she poked idly at a potted flower as the Doctor handled the room booking. Missy was lounging on the beanbag couch, one leg crossed demurely over the other, and by her side, Nardole twisted his anxious hands together. Prodding one of its petals, Bill started backwards when the flower snapped at her, nearly grazing the skin of her index finger. Behind her, Missy giggled. 

“Are you all right?” Nardole asked. 

“Fine,” said Bill, shaking her hand, her heart slowing back to normal. “Guess the flowers bite.” 

Missy snorted once and finally quieted down, taking a long, loud sip of the complimentary cup of pink water on the table next to her. “Is it bleeding?” she asked hopefully. 

Nardole lunged forward, pulling out a plaster who-knew-where and grabbing Bill’s hand to squint at it. “The Doctor’s going to be very angry if you’ve gone and hurt yourself, you know,” he fussed.

“I’m fine,” Bill reassured him. She looked up to see the Doctor, harried and flustered, running a hand through his hair, and she chuckled. “Everything okay?”

The Doctor smoothed down his jacket and said, frowning, “I hate hotels.” He didn’t expand on the point, and instead gestured to them all to follow him. He strode towards a lift decorated on the doors with various bumps and crannies. The music inside was unpredictable and full of swoops and bounds, a million times more exciting than any normal hotel music back on Earth. The Doctor jabbed at a touchscreen inside and the carriage rumbled to life.

“He looks murderous,” Nardole said quietly.

“Oh, yes,” said Missy.

The lift stopped and the doors slid open; the hallway beyond was chilly, carpeted, and lit with fish-shaped lamps adorned with ladder-shaped ornaments. “This one,” said the Doctor after a while, and unceremoniously waved a key-card in front of a reader on the door. 

The room had a very significant flaw that was evident almost immediately. Two beds. Two beds for four people. 

Bill made a small noise in the back of her throat, scanning the room wildly, as though there might be another one hidden somewhere.

The Doctor groaned. “I said three.” 

Missy plopped down on one of the beds and began to remove her heels. “Unlace me,” she commanded, and Bill took a half-step forward despite herself. Shooting her a wry look, the Doctor leant over, pulling and loosening the laces of Missy’s dress with practiced ease.

Bill eyed first Nardole, then the Doctor, and then Missy, and shook her head violently. “I’ll sleep on the floor,” she said, grimacing at the idea of waking up next to any of them. 

Missy squirmed out of the dress, a white lacy slip. “Not necessary,” she said, each syllable accompanied with a tap of the Doctor’s shoulder. “Nardie, you don’t sleep, do you?”

Nardole frowned. “I do, actually.”

“It’s settled, then.”

“Missy,” the Doctor warned. 

“I’m not sleeping with her,” said Bill, stabbing a finger in Missy’s direction. “Sorry.” 

“I’ll sleep with her,” the Doctor suggested. He began to tug out pins from Missy’s hair, running his fingers through her now-free cascading locks of dark brown curls and waves. 

“It’s all right, sir,” said Nardole, painfully loyal to the end. “You don’t have to. I can sleep with Missy.”

Missy combed her fingers through her hair and burrowed underneath the blankets. “I feel so very wanted,” she said to the ceiling, closing her eyes. She reached to the Doctor and brushed her hand against his. 

Hearing Missy sound put out—almost _offended,_ although the displeasure was cloaked under a thick fog of sarcasm—was unsettling. Bill preferred to think of her as an emotionless killer, an alien who took only pleasure from murder and destruction. Missy’s distress was disconcertingly real. Disconcertingly sympathetic. 

The Doctor stood, slipped his coat off, and tossed it to a large bean bag that functioned as a couch. “Nardole,” he said, toeing off his shoes with a quirk of his lip. “I volunteer. Enthusiastically.” 

“Sir—”

“Please, let me sleep with my wife.”

Bill pursed her lips, glanced at Nardole, at the Doctor, at Missy. “I’m not sleeping with Nardole, though!” she said. 

“Well, I can’t sleep with you,” said the Doctor. “On principle.” 

“Good!”

Missy rolled over, and murmured, “C’mere.” 

“What?” said Bill. 

“ _C’mere._ ”

With more than a little trepidation, Bill stepped to Missy’s bed, glancing at the Doctor and Nardole for moral support. “What?” she asked, again. 

Missy patted the mattress. “I don’t bite.”

Bill chewed her bottom lip, looking at the Doctor again. He shrugged. “She’s almost asleep anyway,” the Doctor pointed out.

There weren't many choices left. Exhaustion was weighing on Bill’s eyelids, and the bed looked so fantastically soft, and Missy couldn’t be so dangerous asleep… Bill leaned down, untied her sneakers, slipped off her socks. Stared at Missy, for one more moment. Finally, she climbed in bed.

The Doctor and Nardole muttered to each other for a minute, and then Nardole turned the lights off, plunging the hotel room into sudden darkness. “Good night,” said Nardole. “Sleep tight. Don’t let—”

“Shut up,” said the Doctor. 

Bill shut her eyes and opened them several times. She thought that she couldn’t possibly sleep with Missy beside her; there was no guarantee she wouldn’t wake up with a knife through her chest, or her bones snapped in half, or her airway conveniently blocked. Her heart pounded in her ears and her stomach churned. She could hear Missy’s breaths, the almost imperceptible four-part beat of her hearts, and she wondered how many people had died to the same rhythm. This was going to be a very long night.

* * *

Bill woke up. 

She winced at the bright light of two suns streaming through paper-thin curtains drawn across the windows. Once her eyes adjusted, she watched drowsily as the patterns on the wall pulsed and swirled, slowly fading from color to color in an almost hypnotic fashion.

A foot or two away, Nardole’s familiar face poked out from a pile of blankets, the Doctor’s arm slung around his body almost protectively. Bill turned her head to find her own Time Lord bedfellow hugging a pillow, her lips parted, snoring softly.

“Morning,” whispered the Doctor from across the room, and Bill rolled over to face him. Nardole was between them, sprawled on his back, so she couldn’t see him.

“Morning,” said Bill, covering her mouth and yawning. “Sleep well?”

The Doctor only grunted in response. “You?”

“Think I might—” She yawned again. “—uh, think I might try again. What time is it?”

“Doesn’t matter. Go back to sleep.”

Bill smiled to herself, and looked back at Missy. She looked softer than usual like this, with her lipstick smeared in the corner of her mouth, snuggling a pillow. Obviously, Bill couldn’t think right. Not this early in the morning. “See you later, Doctor.”

“Sleep well, Bill,” said the Doctor’s disembodied voice. 

Bill considered Missy for one more long moment, her heart swelling uncomfortably. She thought she might be going insane, considering what she was now seriously thinking of doing. _She’s asleep_ , Bill reminded herself. God, she was exhausted. 

Finally, she grabbed the pillow and dragged it away, fitting herself in Missy’s arms instead. Missy’s body temperature was cooler than Bill had expected, but not uncomfortably so. She held Bill tighter. “Night, Missy,” said Bill.

Missy only nuzzled her nose into the nape of Bill’s neck in response. 

**Author's Note:**

> petercapaldish on tumblr is either a godsend or the bane of my existence, which i think is sort of the point. Thank you.


End file.
